The Fearsome Foursome

Through my nuisance wildlife business I get to talk “wildlife” with a lot of people and over the years have found strong opinions on just about every species. Nobody really cares for skunks, for obvious reasons but they realistically they are confident and fearless. Fox are usually revered along with deer but there are some critters that simply put inspire genuine and instant fear.

The first is obviously bats. Although there are several species of bats in NYS for the most part people come in contact with the little brown bat Myotis lucifugus. To someone like me who has been known to lock himself in a child’s room trying to capture a flying bat I have a difficult time understanding that fear because I simply find them fascinating. They are the only mammal that truly flies (as opposed to gliding) and the amount of insects they pluck from the air guided by sonar is truly amazing. Cornell Cooperative Extension some years ago put out a video called “The Facts About Bats” which does a great job separating the Bela Lugosi myth from the truth. White nose syndrome has lowered bat populations considerably over the past few years http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/45088.html which can have a serious impact on our local ecosystems.

A DEC tech holds up a little brown bat due to tested for rabies

The second of the foursome has to be spiders. As a kid I got separated from my parents at Six Flags and SpiderMan saved me and brought me back to the lost kid station so as one can imagine spiders also fascinated me even if it was based on a fictional character. In NYS there is only one poisonous spider, the black widow but most are beneficial http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/wildlife_pdf/commonspiders.pdf. The wolf spider is probably the most intimidating being “hairy” like the famed tarantula. I do want to take this opportunity to debunk one myth – the daddy long legs or harvestman. First, the harvestman is not a true spider and the venom has never been part of any experiment to know its potency compared to other spiders and if their jaws cannot penetrate human skin how then can the effects of the venom on humans be known.

The Black Widow

I can still hear Indiana Jones “There’s a big snake on the plane, Jacque”. “Oh, that’s just my pet snake, Reggie”. “I hate snakes Jacque, I hate ‘em”. You guessed it snakes are the third genera of critters that instill fear. Being a Judeo-Christian society the biblical history of snakes already has them at a disadvantage. In NYS there aren’t too many poisonous snakes – just the threatened timber rattler http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/7147.html and we are on the northern of the copperhead http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/ReptilesAmphibians/Facts/FactSheets/Northerncopperhead.cfm. Snakes don’t have to be poisonous to be dangerous though because sometimes just the saliva can cause allergic reactions. As with spiders most snakes are beneficial and of the fearsome foursome I must admit to having reservations handling snakes but welcomed my neighbors python as it wrapped itself around my arm. The interesting part of snakes is the varied methods for killing prey including constriction, venom and the swallowing of prey whole and the fact that some snakes have a pelvic girdle indicating that had at one legs and through evolution lost them.

A garter snake

The last of the quad are the most infamous – sharks. Peter Benchley’s Jaws literally had people planning vacations inland although the book stars a great white shark http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/fish/great-white-shark/ the book is actually based on accounts of bull shark http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/bull-shark/ attacks off the Jersey shore. Interestingly, the bull shark is the only shark that can tolerate freshwater. The other three of the top five “man-eaters” are tiger sharks, blue sharks and the mako. One interesting fact about sharks is that they don’t experience cancer. Nowadays, the fear of sharks is slowly but surely being taken over by fascination and that is good. Although I have snorkled with sharks in the Bahamas one of my goals is to go in a shark cage.